


Wind On The Rise

by BannedBloodOranges



Category: Muppet Treasure Island (1996), Treasure Island - Robert Louis Stevenson
Genre: Adventure, Amorality, Corruption, Drama, F/F, F/M, Five Years Later, Genderswap, Johanna Silver is a bastard (but you already know that), Kidnapping, Muppet Characters as Humans - Freeform, Period Typical Attitudes, Piracy, Rule 63, dark humour
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-19
Updated: 2019-11-20
Packaged: 2020-05-12 10:00:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,248
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19226857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BannedBloodOranges/pseuds/BannedBloodOranges
Summary: Since when had they become slatterns, bitches, pirates? Since when had they become she-wolves?Five years have passed since Jimena Hawkins departed Treasure Island and her beloved friend Gabrielle ran off to sea. She closes her dreams small and safe and accepts her lot with teeth only lightly clenched, for an arranged marriage to outstanding Officer Arrow looms on the horizon.But Johanna Silver is spotted in a local inn, and Jimena, against all her expectations, is unable to let sleeping dogs lie. Once again the wind rises and the tide calls.





	1. prologue - a long time ago.

**Author's Note:**

> Characterisations and situations based on Muppet Treasure Island. Muppet characters are adapted into humans and feature as major characters. As this features genderswapped characters (and if you are familiar with my other works) Richard is Erica and Garrett is Gabrielle (Rizzo and Gonzo, respectively.)  
> This is for non-profit fun only.

 

 

 

 

 

 

_Oh won't you come with me_  
_Where the moon is made of gold_  
_And in the morning sun_  
_We'll be sailing_

 

_Oh won't you come with me_  
_Where the ocean meets the sky_  
_And as the clouds roll by_  
_We'll sing the song of the sea_

 

_Song of the Sea,_ **Nolween Leroy**

 

* * *

  _We start at the end._

 

The sky pinked as it turned over into the night. It always did in these seas. The dark always emerged over the lilac blood of the setting sun. Blood, then black, bruising across the skyline. It had been beautiful the first time Erica had seen it. Now she'd seen it so much that if she closed her eyes too quickly, pink blotched the backs of her eyelids.

In England where she'd been spawned the sunsets had always been grey, whipped up by the winds and impossibly cold. Here, the heat had set in her bones and she couldn't imagine herself without it, even as dry and old and hot these bones now were. The sunsets of her childhoods were all but daydreams, so frail now that she could no longer imagine the smell, the sight, the feel of them.

There was no moon. She held the lantern up to her face as she walked, wincing at how the light carved out each drag on her skin like a dispassionate carpenter.

People stuck to the sides of her path like ghosts, allowing her passage like an omen. 

Up ahead, the hulk of her dwelling stuck out of the trees, wood and brick forming the rudder of her house. Steps that always strained her back led to the front door hung with feathers and gemstones, leading to the raggedy boudoir she called her home.

Jimena was there. Of course she was, where else would she be?

She was standing by the window. Her yellow hair - a vanity, Erica always thought - hung under her hat, trailing away into a dry curl in the middle of her back. Her breeches were damp around the knee. She'd been trailing in the ocean again, Erica knew.

"It's awful late to turn up," Erica sat the lantern on the table. She dropped her shawl over her shoulders. Even with the added weight of a full diet and age, her shoulder blades still struck out like dagger bones. "I trust you'll be staying the night? Without sending word first, I wager."

Jimena half turned. The scar that puckered her cheek like crimped pie crust stood out in her profile, the white and red of it a burnish on her flesh. It had been such a long time ago, that scar, but Erica never got used to it.

"What of it?" Jimena moved to the desk. Her eyes were blue, cold in the lantern light. Erica thought dimly there was no need for a moon. "This is my home too."

"You're not here enough."

"Why would that make a difference?"

Erica scoffed. She emptied out a heft of coins left on the mantel - by Jimena, no less, and she'd long forgotten the surprise of limitless funds - and begun to count them, one by one.

"She's not back, so don't look."

Jimena sat down. Erica, not desiring to look into the cleaved face, continued to add up. She took out a book and begun to scratch out the numbers.

"Is she coming back?"

Erica's nib tremored. She licked her lips and turned the page.

"Why ask me?"

"You know these things..."

"I don't know anything." Erica looked up. It was Jimena's turn to down her gaze. "You know that, so why ask. If they've found her, they've found her. But what I do know is you've been..." She frowned at her dripping boots. "...wandering again."

Jimena sat back.

"It clears my head."

"It'll go to your head clear enough," Erica said, bluntly. "And you'll die of cold, or pick up disease in the water, and leave me alone."

There was silence, save the draw of Erica's quill on the page.

"What do you know about loneliness?"

"Plenty," Erica replied. "Ever since my mother of indistinguishable birth slimed me out on a beach and left me to die." She tapped her quill in the Inkwell. "Any other questions?"

Jimena growled. She rose suddenly, switching on her feet to march again to the window, and Erica felt the pulse of her distress penetrate the air, and she would feel pity, she would. Except she did, _of course_ she did, for they were the oldest things in this colony, the two of them, even if Jimena came and went like a ghost. At times Jimmy would sleep in the chair, rocking it back and forth with a blanket over her knees. At other times, she would crawl into Erica's bed like a child, even if both women were now nearing fifty. But most times, she was hard, and other times, unapproachable, as trying to talk was akin to knifing off the back of an elderly tortoise.

_Jimena._ There, in her man clothes, twisting her flaxen hair back into a messy braid. They'd all been children once, through Erica couldn't always remember. They'd been a time she'd been starving skinny. They'd been a time when Jimena's face was as fresh as new parchment and her tempers sweet, her eyes blue with innocence as opposed to cataract.

One adventure. All it took was one adventure and one malcontented woman.

_Demon woman, more like._

But Erica knew the real truth of it. Jimena had always been restless. Gabrielle had always wanted more. A terrible word that - _more._ If she could scrub that from the tongue, she would, if she wasn't such a hypocrite herself. Treasure Island had shown her more bounty than she'd ever imagined, more shine than any pirate would know what to do for. A richer life gave her appetite for _more._ More food, more fabrics, more gold. Gabrielle had given her an appetite for more than she ever knew of herself, and even now, she still pretended to be scandalised by (for humour, mostly.)

But Gabrielle wasn't here. The months stretched on,  animated by her always unfinished counting and Jimena's fraying nerve. That was the trouble with wanting more, she decided. Those who were content, or who could trick themselves into being content, were always left behind.

As she was doomed to be, left in the wilderness of domesticity, speaking more tongues then she ever dared herself, keeping count over the heads of her community.

Gabrielle's settlement, their short-lived port, had become a permanent home. Pirates, outlaws, ex-slaves, women, living side by side in the hut houses, the beached ships, forming communities out of the rocks and the sands and the way by that life had left them. They traded, lived and loved, and all under the watchful eye of truths and guidelines kept firm in place by Jimena's hawk eye (when she felt like being there) and Gabrielle's power of personality, of smiling threat (when she wasn't chasing another dream, another ship, another island.) That left Erica with the economics, and therefore, left her with everything.

"I can hear you thinking." Jimena was leant over the papers, her hand shy of Erica's wrist. The candle spluttered with her breath. Like that old ghoul Johanna Silver, hell rest her, she had picked up her soundless speed. "You miss her too."

"Course I do," Erica poured the coins into her bag and felt the weight of it in her palm. "Contrary to popular belief, I'm not a monster."

"Hm." Jimena dared a smile. Her hand felt for the compass at her belt.

"I had Thomas Portland hung," Erica stated. She cleared the desk, lying the written record in the top drawer.

"What was his crime?"

"Battery." Erica helped herself to an apple, slicing it down to the core. She took a bite, mouthing through the pulp. "Attempted rape."

She told the executor dully to make the drop a short, stiff one. (He'd strangled slow, kicking at air, fat eyed with saliva on his chin and bloodspots breaking around his neck.)

"Gabrielle left you in charge of our law?"

Erica pretended not to be irritated by the disbelief in her voice. Cheeky bint.

"The length of the rope, to be exact."

They looked at her with respect now (but fear, mostly fear.)

"Good." Like the scar, Erica hadn't gotten used to Jimena's shrug. A lazy callousness, Erica had called it, all those years ago. She'd shrieked it at Gabrielle and Jimena both. Now, she didn't care.

"They say they've seen ships off our borders." Jimena sat. She removed her hat. "English ships."

"Spying, are they? Merchant ships, coming to do a trade?"

"No." Jimena combed out her hair with her fingers. About her face, it made her appear younger. "A Frigate Man of War. Circling."

"That be awfully conspicuous," Erica handed Jimena a slice of her apple, who nibbled the ends of it oh so delicate. Even with her calloused hands and ruined cheek, there was still the whisper of a lady. "They would surely send something less obvious to scope out our place. As far as they know, we're just a humble little port town."

"You'll think it'll pass in the night, then?" Jimena wiped her mouth, a sneer on her lips. In her expression sung a shadow of Johanna, and there came a crick in Erica's stomach, but Jimena's eyes were soft. "I've already sent out a lookout. Armed our people on the west front. We know our home too well to give it up so easily."

Erica struck her fruit knife in the table.

"And you thought not to tell me first?"

"You would have said it was nothing. Even with the evidence, you still fear a good fight."

"I don't fear as much as I used too!" Erica said sharply, and hated it, for in her tone was the whine of a long-ago child and Jimena eased, taking her hand and soothing her knuckles with her forefinger and thumb.

Erica swallowed hard.

"Look," she continued. "You make our lookouts visible, you create a defensive narrative. They'll see and wonder why our people hide behind high fortresses with flintlock muskets aimed over the yardarm. They're going to think we have something to hide."

"Come now," Jimena cut through. It was exactly the same dismissive, easy tone she - _Silver_ \- would have used. "You think me so naive as to make it obvious? What do you think the last few decades have taught me, if not caution?"

"To still wander off into the ocean like a helpless romantic," Erica ripped the knife from the table. The light in the room was scarce. Her lantern was dying. "Even now, you still..."

"What?" Jimena uttered deftly, with more than a touch of threat. She rose then, all her legends creeping up in the stretch of her long shadow. A Pirate Captain, a she-wolf of the sea. Hack Face Hawkins, Jimmy The Jilter, the bride of Long Johnny and her ilk.

Erica shook her head.

"Nothing." She said, with the opposite in her words. Jimmy heard it too, and she was glad of that, for her shoulders fell with her breath. Erica turned toward the bed, opening her shirt and releasing her skirts. The mosquitos hummed in the glow of the lantern, tiny poisonous bodies a pound against the glass.

Pulling her hair free from her scarf, Erica stretched herself out on the blanket and cradled her head in the arch of her arm. The bed creaked. Jimena removed her boots and lay beside her. The lantern finally burned out and left them in darkness.

For an hour, they lay there, Erica's wakefulness a prick in her eyelids. Jimena's breath was short and severe, a dry sob hidden in her sleep.

"Come on," Her voice was painfully loud. "Come on, talk to me."

"I believed it would become easier, in time," Jimena spoke tenderly in the night. Her back was an uncomfortable press against Erica's hip. As far apart as they tried to sleep, there'd been a magnet in their skin since they were children. "Sometimes I can live with it. Other times I can't."

"That's true of everything in life," Erica added, wise but unhelpful.

"But I think I see her, sometimes. In the tide." Jimena was murmuring now, half asleep. Erica listened in silence. "I keep walking, trying to reach her. But she's gone. Gone to places I cannot follow."

"You try to follow through," Erica glared at the wall. "You wade into the sea all entranced, scare me half to bloody death. Like Billy, remember? When he had the horrors. He'd shriek or fight and other times he would sit and shudder. Mad and bad, that old bastard was."

Jimena was quiet. Erica turned her head and saw she was still; asleep or not, who knew where her mind was now. Maybe seeing old legends sink beneath the waves like childhood stories. She turned her body toward her, and reached her hand to feel her breath, the bubble of her lip where the scar had stolen her face.

At that moment, all Erica wanted was Gabrielle, returned to them safely. Gabrielle filled out space so well, could tame Jimena's wanderings. Not that she would mention that to Gabrielle, or Jimena. She wouldn't even mention it to herself. But Gabrielle had gone to the sea, a promise of return exchanged but never guaranteed.

They'd left her to worry. As always, left to worry! She worried enough for all three of them, garroted rapists and threatening ships no help.

The mists had cleared and a weak moon bled through the windows, falling on Jimena's unmarred side. Like that, she looked as Erica remembered. Like that, she looked like a child.

Erica groped beside her, pulling out a dark bottle, from which she took a hefty swig. With the neck of it against her lips, she murmured a prayer for Gabrielle - as she always did since they were children, but there was no God as far as she knew - and saw the light clasp on the old compass, left sleeping on the desk.

Erica savoured the sweet spice of the rum, the stick of it on her tongue and chin.

Thirty-five years Johanna Silver had been haunting them. Even now, with the ol' demon dead for more than a decade, she still steered Jimena Hawkins, breathing out in her skin. Thirty-five years ago, they'd all been children. And now, to think they were feared! Since when had they become slatterns, bitches, pirates? Since when did  _they_ become she-wolves? Hadn't they done the same as countless others, just tried to survive?

Oh, _survival._ Erica smirked at that. She eyed a gold coin split from the bag, all rosy next to the dull copper of Jimena's compass. Yes, she knew the truth of it, knew the truth of herself.

It had all been such a long, long time ago.


	2. A Long, Long Time Ago

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A proposal, and a loss that is gravely felt even after half a decade.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the huge delay and that I've been AWOL! I will try to return to my TI projects soon.

It had been five years since Gabriella had left. Five summers. In the summer it was easier to forget, for the formidable heat made it impossible to think beyond the next glass of water or the slumber of shade. But the five winters were harder. They were cool and bright and acrid under the Caribbean sun, with maddening sea breezes that came and went in the night. Jimena imagined Gabrielle sailing away on that breeze. She would open the window and lean it, almost kissing it, inhaling it, imagining her breath catching on the ends of it and carrying away, to meet the breath of Gabrielle, wherever she was.

Erica tinkered her spoon around her cup. She spied Jimena observing the hordes of men unloading their goods onto the docks and smirked.

"See anything you like?"

Jimena made a hard noise with her tongue.

"No," she turned back to the pink frilled clutter of the boudoir. Perfumes cloyed the air. Costly cabinets trimmed the room and bottles, brushes, layers of chiffon and silk were grandly strewn about. _So this is what a woman is supposed to smell like,_ she thought blandly.

Erica was too wise for her own good.

"Make all the faces you want," she snatched a truffle from the box and drank the rest of her tea dry. "Compared to the oily tat of the Benbow, this place is a palace and I'm not going to apologise for the luxuries."

"I never said you had to."

"You didn't have to say it," Irritable, Erica kicked up her heeled shoes on the pouffe. "I can hear you thinking, loud as day."

"I'm thinking about Gabrielle."

Erica choked. She took a deep, hard swallow, her cheeks pink.

"Don't we..." She started weakly before she swallowed again and glared at the bottom of her cup. "Don't we all? She left. I don't want to..."

"We have to speak about it sometime, Erica."

"Not now!" The teacup toppled, spilling dregs over the plush throw rug. Erica dabbed at it uselessly with a napkin. "She left us. End of story. What is there to discuss?"

"Did she say anything to you at all?" Jimena wheedled. Erica was so private, but whenever Gabrielle was mentioned, it was as if the tremors of a volcano had come to pass. She had to know something, she had to. After five years, surely?

"Nothing." Erica retrieved the teacup with a sniff. "She said nothing to me. She picked up her part of the treasure and left. If I'd known, I would have told her to stop. To think. Hard enough being a woman, let alone one of colour. Just stay here and live rich, be _grateful_." Erica snarled and slammed the cup on the table. The muddy hues of her eyes were light, tearful. "But she was never grateful. She wanted more. Could never settle, with all her jitterbug bones. Same as when we were children. Same as..." She glared at Jimena. "...same as you."

"She didn't want to settle," snapped Jimena. An argument was brewing between them now. With the mention of Gabby, it always did. "Why did she have to? When did any of us have to?"

"Because we came from nothing!" Erica stood. She was too small for her own good, barely coming up to Jimena's chin. "We're slum slatterns, Jimmy.  No amount of powder or perfume or hair coiffed like bread rolls is going to change that. We hit a prize. We had the kind of luck that lepers must have felt when they saw Jesus comin' over the horizon! Why..." She took a step back, unable to meet Jimena's eyes. "...why isn't it enough for you? It wasn't enough for Gabby, and god knows where she is now."

"I think you know," Jimena said, cold. She didn't mean to be - Erica was her sister in everything but blood. But the moonlight cradle on Gabrielle's face sung in her memory, and the sting of suspicion bit her tongue and bit Erica as a result. "You're not telling me."

For a moment, Erica's lower lip trembled.

"No." She swept away, gathering her skirts as she sat down. "No."

“Ladies!” Benjamina swept in. Even among her own pink boudoir, she stood out in blinding fuchsia. “I trust you two sweetlings are not fighting, surely?”

“No,” Jimena said, after a pregnant pause. Erica sniffed and looked away. “No, we weren’t fighting.”

“Good.” Benjamina pursed her lips. “I come with a message, Jimmy. Mr Arrow is outside. He looks…” She struggled to find the right word.

“Constipated?” muttered Erica, helping herself to a truffle.

“Hardly the ladylike term, but…” Benjamina nodded, her ruffled hair bobbing to and fro. “Yes, he does.”

* * *

 

The drifting powders of Mr Arrow’s wig were animated by the bright sunlight. He was standing on the balcony, overlooking the troops of men marching in uniform lines, the tradesman slinging wicker baskets from their dinghies. The recent inhabitation of the Caribbean port by the British had shrunk the coastline with houses, huts, taverns and shops. Arrow, in his dress uniform, removed his watch from his pocket and frowned at it.

“Mr Arrow?” 

Arrow snapped the lid shut. 

“Mrs Hawkins.”

“You wished to see me?” Jimena inquired politely. She stood beside him, but at a respectable distance; she’d tried to learn her lessons well. Arrow cleared his throat, fiddling with the pocket on his coat.

“That I did, yes.” He turned his attention to the bustle below. “I trust you are keeping well?”

“Yes, thank you.”

“And your prospects?”

He’d never spoken to Gabrielle about prospects. Or Erica. 

_Limited,_ she almost said.

“I’m thinking of becoming involved with the seaborne trades,” Jimena said, conversationally. It was a dream, to be sure, but she had seen successful women on the docks. Widows, mostly, but she was certain with her budding fortune she could make an exception.

“I see,” Arrow crossed his arms, then uncrossed them, then held them tightly behind his back. Overhead, a group of seagulls fought violently for a discarded ship’s biscuit. The wind, on the rise, caught the curls hanging loose from Jimena’s bun. 

A hand brushed her bare shoulder. His fingers shivered so, and he started as if to brush back her hair before he turned away at her curious glance.

“I...” He sniffed. “...am considering making investments into merchant ships.”

“Are you?” The oddness of the whole encounter was making Jimena feel light-headed. She wasn’t sure if spontaneous laughter would make it any better. 

“I have been making significant changes in my life.” Arrow was a man of few words. That single sentence was enough to cover his word allowance for the month. “I believe my days of protecting the Crown on her grand vessels at sea are at an end. I seek to serve my country from the ports at which I am assigned.”

Laughter was not an option. Jimena started battering at her face with her fan.

“I believe…” he continued; Jimena flapped it harder. “That although it is an honour, it is lonely.”

_This isn’t happening._

“I can imagine so,” she managed, her throat dry as a desert.

“I...” Arrow faced her finally. His gaze darted to the fan. “I trust I am not making you nervous, Jimena?”

Oh god, he used her _name._

“Not at all,” she said, uncharacteristically high. Five years previously, she and her two friends had tricked and combated pirates; she would have happily taken it all over again to prevent this very conversation. 

“I am glad.” Arrow nodded. “It is hot. The flies, they...” He gestured hopelessly toward the hypothetical “flies.” “...never mind about that. But as it stands, even with my reputation, my commission, and the favour of the crown, I have nothing to leave behind. No legacy to inspire or protect. To build that, I must first take a wife.”

Jimena closed her fan with a hard _snap._

“There are many eligible women in this settlement.” She tried her words carefully. “Of noble birth, from good families.”

Jimena had no birth right, no dowry, just the greasy blood of an absent sailor and a working mother who had whored in the evenings. Samuel Arrow shook his head.

“I have seen those women,” he said, and then, with a shaking voice, he added; “But no woman as fine as you. The fact you say it so plainly speaks to your honesty.”

Jimena placed her hand over her stomacher, as she had seen the delicate ladies do, in times of stress or sadness. But to Arrow, it seemed to imply passion, for he took a deep breath.

“You are kind and honest,” he spoke. “A woman of bravery and vision. I require a wife, a keen head in counsel, a mother for my children. And...” He took her hand and kissed it. Jimena wanted to crawl out of her skin. “...if you will permit me, I would endeavour to be a fine and faithful husband.”

All his pallid, severe features were lit with love. Nobody had looked at Jimena like that before; except one, but she was long gone, and the memory of all they could have seen and been drew bitter tears to Jimena’s eyes, and Arrow faltered a little, looking at her with mingled hope and fear.

It was a smart decision, and as Johanna had told her, she had to think quick on her feet to be smart.

“Yes.” She smiled, swallowing back Gabrielle’s memory like a sour plum. “I’m honoured.”

* * *

 

An uneasy quiet descended in the following months. There was not else to be done but plan for the wedding. Summer approached and with it the dry, acrid air that kept Jimena awake in the nights. Erica stayed with her, for her groom had no need for her, and the two women played the days away in serviceable conversation and comfort.

Arrow paid court to Jimena's door. They went for walks; he spoke of his business, choosing his topics as not to bore her. For Jimena, there was an airless duty to her company. She kept count of her steps and nodded at the breaks in his sentences although her haze hovered past his face to the ocean.

"My father died at sea," she had spoken as they had walked along the bay into the sunset. Arrow had called upon her as she and Erica had picnicked together, and there had been no time to change. Jimena dressed light in the summer evenings, white linens with roses blushed on the sleeves and skirt. The lace of her modesty panel had itched her skin and so she had abandoned it, and her shoes for her bare feet on the sand, and the wind had scrambled her hair. Indeed, she looked wild. The salt air roughened her skin and she licked her lips to taste it. "My mother said her heart was in the sea, where he was."

"Did she?" Samuel was uncharacteristically restless. Jimena paused and pulled her hair over her bare neck. In her boldness, she forgot he saw her not as a child. Here, bare in chest and feet, he observed her, wounded and fascinated. "Your mother loved a sailor."

"As I love the sea," Jimena explained. Samuel drew close. He took off his hat.

"As I..." What did he see? Some hint of feeling, so thin a thread it could be severed with a breath? "...hope to love you."

He took her hand and kissed it. He thought she'd come out here so he could see her like this. That she had loosened her hair for him to touch, a perfumed promise for the martial bed. His fingers skimmed under her chin, and there, under the emerging stars, he kissed her with lips as dry and acrid as the dire summer heat.

 

* * *

 

The red reflected glow of candles impressed everybody's face with a sunken shadow. The sky rumbled malcontent behind the windows. The silence at the long table was broken by the mild burr of Arrow and Smollett's conversation and the tinker of silverware. The servants stood at the sides running sweat in the heat.

Jimena could not eat. Erica frowned at her.

"It's the humidity," she whispered under her breath. "Not food."

"You've been acting offside since your last walk," Erica spoke out the side of her mouth. "What happened?"

"He..." Jimena bit her tongue. Samuel's attention had slipped past Smollett and fallen on her, a pull of a smile on his lips. Jimena looked down, folding her napkin in her lap. Smollett shared Samuel's gaze, and taking Jimena's quiet for bashfulness, smiled indulgently at his friend. Jimena dropped her voice further. "He kissed me."

"Bloody hell," Erica replied dryly; "Well, I'd get used to that if I were you."

"You never had to get used to it."

"Thank god. He had another boy last night. Pretty thing he was, and polite too. Offered to bring me a brandy. I asked him if he wanted any ointment for the rug burns on his knees."

Jimena coughed into her napkin, smiling through the frustration welling to a burst in her stomach, and Erica smirked through her wine.

"Tally ho!" A smash of china and the decisive thud of a walking stick; Squire Trelawney had entered the building. A shriek from the chamber mind and a half-drunken apology confirmed the fact; Arrow groaned. Smollett just smiled with even more indulgence and gestured for the footman to allow him in.

 

* * *

 

"Terrible business!" It was getting late. It was time for the women to leave, the men to talk shop. So naturally, Benjamina lumped herself in between the men, listening hard to the latest news on the docks. "Why, what a farce, for the rogues to show themselves once again."

Erica kept yawning with great prejudice, pointedly in the direction of Jimena. Instead, Jimena sat beside Jimena. For all of Benjamina's frills (for which they had nothing in common), she had to admire her conviction, her refusal to shrink herself. Smollett had always encouraged their input and education. Arrow's hand lay gently over Jimena's.

The squire was so drunk he couldn't tell if they were men or not.

"Terrible!" He enthused. "Why, it insults me as an upstanding Englishman to be here, with such news...more brandy, there's a man..."

"Out with it, Squire," Arrow growled. Jimena couldn't blame him.

"Oh, Sammy!" Trelawney spilt his drink over his trousers. He was terribly young for a squire; his auspicious father was not much better.  "Why, do you remember that...treasure business..."

"Yes, Squire," Smollett said kindly.

"Well...remember that pirate...the one with the breasts..."

As if stung, Jimena pulled her hand away.

Benjamina became pale and patted down her skirts.

"What of her?" Arrow sat up straight, the enforcer breaking through the social niceties. "Has she been sighted?"

"Why, yes,” Trelawney continued dreamily; "Down by the docks, in local taverns. Her crew, both men and women, most unorthodox, have also been..."

"Where?" Arrow sat up, furious. "For god's sake man, spit out!"

"Maybe this isn't the time," Smollett intervened gently, his hand on Arrow's trembling arm. "I think we should discuss this privately."

"This is a matter that involves all of us! I shall not..."

Jimena stood up.

A ringing quiet accompanied her.

"I agree with Admiral Arrow." Her hand went to her skirt. The circular weight of the compass pushed through the pocket, warm in her palm. "What are your sources?"

"I...well." Trelawney fought for sobriety. "Something about a siren, a..."

"We won't remember in the morning." Benjamina cut across, cold. "He's punch drunk and talking nonsense."

"We should leave it until the morning." Erica's teacup shook in her hand. She drained the rest of her tea and stood up. "I'm...I'm going to bed."

"Yes, quite," Smollett rose, halting Arrow's protests. "I think we've had plenty to drink and require a night's rest to ease our anxieties. Come, Squire. I insist you use our spare room."

The babbling Squire was escorted by Smollett and the footman. Benjamina rose, with a huff, her hands falling on the coin necklace heavy around her neck.

 

* * *

 

The storm filled Jimena's lungs. The air was foul and rheumy, petted with rain. She held her hand to her stomach, steadying her breath. She'd fled to the balcony as the chambermaids had lowered the lights. The chatters of the dwindling party had chased her. She could not bear Erica's fear or Benjamina's eyes.

Johanna Silver was alive. She was alive and here, right now, in the spread of miles between the dock and Smollett's fine house.

She was alive.

"Jimena..." Arrow shut the balcony door. Jimena's bones jumped in her skin at the touch at her shoulder. "Are you alright?"

"She's alive," Jimena could not look at him. Instead, she weighed her compass in her hand. "I thought she was dead."

"That wily sea rat..." Arrow stopped himself, remembered his tenderness, and moved in front of her, squeezing her arms. "I will not let her hurt you again, Jimena."

"I'm not afraid." She looked at him directly in the eye. "I have never feared her."

It was not a truth, but it was not a lie, for fear was the simplest of emotions she'd felt since knowing the old pirate. The pirate who'd posed as a man, who revealed her secret to Jimena the first night of the voyage, who spoke of dark seas, blood, excitement. She'd traced the stars with her calloused fingers and invited Jimena to do the same.

Life was simple until Jimena had stepped into her galley.

Nothing was that simple anymore, nor did she expect it to be.

"I know." Arrow dropped his hands. "I do not mean to patronise you. It is your bravery that I so admired when you were a girl. How forthright you were in your battles, as skilled than any cabin boy. Although I did not initially agree on you and your sisters coming along."

Jimena tried a weak smile.

"Captain Smollett is a progressive man."

"An odd one," he corrected. "But I do not fault him for it. Especially..." he caressed her cheek. "...now. But as it is, I wish to protect you. I will find these outlaws. Bring them to justice."

Jimena's head buzzed with memory. Her tongue stung with all she wished to say, but the hardness on Arrow's face was built like a wall and she knew he would not understand. Or Erica, who'd bound duty and luck to her soul like a vice.

The only person who would know - who would understand - had fled. The only other - the ol' demon herself - existed somewhere where a siren sang cruel.  


	3. The Happy Siren

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A marriage interrupted.

 

The clothes she had gathered were the kind of working-class rags she would have worn now, if not for the treasure.

It had been so long since she'd strayed to the side streets. Oh, how her days had been spent in quaint tearooms, finishing schools, tight-faced maids with a ruler in one hand and a book in the other. But back in the dark roads, she saw the spitfire lights in high windows, heard the revelry that could spark laughter or violence from each doorway. She kept her head down, her footsteps quick. She had a knife hidden in her garter and a pistol in her belt. The pub drew nearer, and she lifted her eyes to the rotten sign. _The Happy Siren_ creaked above her. A crowd of men shuffled outside halted upon seeing her, their eyes slowly moving across her face to her bodice. Jimena tugged her shawl across her chest, ducked her head, and entered.

She'd heard the rumours, and after all, she had her common sense. She knew Johanna, knew her love for a captive audience.

The inn was cloistered with people, stank with ale and sweat. In the oily light, musicians squawked their instruments and women canoodled on men's laps, old lace drooped on their thick shoulders, red on their cheeks and breasts. Men drank and danced and laughed, pushing against her, rolling her around in the crowd. Jimena fought to keep her bearings, struggling her feet through the sea of bodies, each face larger and drunker than the next, until finally, she found a corner, near to the window.

Ripping her shawl from her shoulders, Jimena leant out of the window and took a deep breath, the sting of salt air on her lips.

An older woman jostled her, shoving for room. She was counting her coins in her open palm. Jimena staggered, frowning to keep in her curse, before a thick burr of laughter made her start.

A figure in grey undershirt and waistcoat held court in the centre of the rabble. A Captain's coat hung off their chair, Her ringed hand was steady on her single knee, her other rattling a handful of dice in her fist. Black braids streaked down her broad back, secured by a red bandana tied lazily one side. She chuckled a throaty contralto of threat and humour. Her face was turned away, but Jimena would know her in hell.

"Excuse me." She turned to the woman, who snapped away her coins, glowering. But Jimena dropped her hand in her purse and gave her the letter she'd toiled over, and with it, a guinea as payment. "Could you give that to Johanna Silver?"

The woman looked at her blankly, before she nodded, took the money and the note, and made her way toward the heart of the room. Jimena placed her shawl around her head and shrunk into the shadows.

The woman tapped the gambling figure on the shoulder. Johanna half-turned, the candlelight illuminating her strong profile. Jimena held the breath.

Even in the noise of the inn, the silence of her reading was audible. After a moment she folded it and beckoned the woman closer. Jimena looked desperately across the crowd. She knew what Johanna was asking before she could find an escape, but then, it was too late, for the woman gestured back to her, and Johanna turned.

Jimena cursed it, for she did not want to look in that face again, not now, not ever.

But like a weakling, she froze.

Johanna's frown began to creep into a smirk.

Jimena spun, unlatched the window, and found her own exit instead.

* * *

Jimena waited a full day before venturing down to the shore.

Hitching up her petticoats, Jimena pressed her toes into the shallows, feeling the pump of the sand beneath her foot. Water swirled, licking her ankles, drawing her further in. She took a gulp of the salt air, holding it slow in her lungs, leaning back her neck. Her hair tumbled from its wind-battered bun and kissed her high pale cheeks, and there, Jimena stood, feeling for the first time her last sunset as a free woman.

Across the waves, she thought of Gabrielle. Five years gone. Now all she was an echo of rangy limbs lost in the distance, strong feet on golden sand, her long arms held up to Jimena in the last shadows of their shared girlhood.

_“What can I do, as I am?”_

Girlhood. It had protected them, in dreams. But then, Samuel’s eye was turning on her, the treasure was stocked, and the tide was out. Even with their riches, Gabrielle had turned out her dark arms and dark head and dark hair, and Jimena had seen the woman in the girl, blooming beautiful beneath her mismatched eyes, onyx and steel salt blue. In them, Jimena had felt that distance, the disparity that society bred (man and woman, black and white) even if her heart had surged to join Gabrielle, to take the horizon as free women.

_“I don’t know.”_ Jimena had spoken those words, sixteen summers with their own summer dying a death beyond them. _“All I can say is that, the future is what you make it.”_

At those words, Gabrielle’s face, so strange and flat in those hours, had sparked, firecrackers of her old eccentricity ablaze in her eyes, and the kiss on Jimena’s lips, light and warm, her first and last kiss, for the following morn, Gabrielle and her catch of the treasure was long departed.

Erica, now proud and married, to a man who flitted boys to their bedchamber and left the dwelling of house and ships to her. Erica made a smart match. Now it was Jimena’s turn.

Samuel Arrow was a good man. He would provide, and maybe in time, allow her to provide as well.

And for Johanna, well. She had repaid the debt to her conscience. If the old pirate had any sense (and she had plenty of that, mark her) she'd be long gone.

“Well, well.” A sweet cackle breezed by her ear. Stiffening, Jimena pulled away from the sand, digging her feet painfully back into her shoe. “There be my Jimmy, feeling the last kiss of these here shores, hm?”

Speak of the devil.

“I told you…” Jimena fought her hair back in her bun. “…to run. Do you know what they’ll do if they find you?”

“I can think of a few things, can I,” Johanna loped over to her side, and sat herself down on the rocks, lying her crutch by her side. As always, she was smiling, but her teeth were all too visible. Jimena remembered the slip of a blindfold, five years previous, and that same smile, glowering frenzied down at her. “But I cannot say that I can think of a fate worse than havin’ to let Arrow lay port between one’s legs.”

Jimena snatched her overdress from the sands, her fingers fumbling to fasten it.

“Don’t speak of what you don’t know,” Her modesty panel was lain over the rock, dangerously close to Johanna’s crutch, and as true as anything, the dainty lace was lifted and examined by Silver’s filthy hands. “He’s a – give that back, damn you!”

“Oh, I know this one,” said Silver, pleasantly. (It was anything but.) “He be a good man, I reckon. Sensible choice, hm?”

Jimena sucked her lips, fury and fright inside her. (Fury for Johanna, fright for her words.)

“I can hardly refuse, can I?” she burst out. Silver rolled the lace between her fingers. The action caused a quiver down Jimena’s calves. She balled her fists and turned away. “I don’t expect you to understand.”

“No, ye don’t, do you?” The older woman rose. _She was a woman,_ Jimena thought feverishly. Her body rolled in her clothes, a belt buckle secured crudely around her hips. “I think I know better than you think, lass. Forgotten my stories so quick, have you?”

Jimena had not forgotten. How could she, with the spool of that ship forever in her head, the stars swimming forever in the reflection of the ocean. Johanna, nearby, speaking low in her ear of adventure beyond the horizon, of adventure beyond limits. What a naïve dream, it had been.

“No,” she choked on the memory. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Johanna’s eyebrows rise. “Never, and you know it.”

“Do I?” Johanna had gentled. She reached for her crutch and stood. The wind flew up her ink black braids, white licked through the crown of her head. Standing there, she was like a maimed siren, full of age-old stories, and once again, as she had been years before, Jimena was taken with a longing. It was a violent need, it was, and unfair and intolerable to the appetites she had nursed herself to accept.

Jimena, pins sticking out her mouth, began to adjust her bun, only to feel fingers stroking the curl of it, running it loose until her hair was scattering wild about her face, and into her vision came Johanna, her hand curling out into the immaterial breath between them.

“You certain this be what you want, lass?” She queried, gently, so like the starlit talk five years before. “You can just say the word, Jimmy, and I’ll take ye with me now, and away we’ll go, to the sea and stars, and nobody would know.”

The horizon crept closer in the spill of the setting sun, bloody light a swathe on Silver’s cheek. Jimena opened her mouth – then thought of Smollett, of Arrow, of Erica. The land was beyond her now, and it was the land she turned to as she spoke.

“I am certain.” She said, firm. “You should leave, before anybody sees you. If they hang you, I can’t stop it.”

“I see.” Johanna did not argue. For a mad second, Jimena wished deliriously that she would, that she would cackle and spin her eyes in her sockets and say what choice she had. But Silver took her crutch and turned away. “If that be your choice lass, I will not stop you. I wish you the best, love.”

The endearment rushed warmth down Jimena’s spine, tingling tears in her eyes, that she hid in her cuffs.

There was no pause, no lingering look, no further touch.

When Jimena looked, finally, the sun had settled below the flat line of the sea, and the path leading away was dark and empty.

* * *

It was her wedding day. It was _supposed_ to be happy.

Jimena sat in front of her mirror, stabbing holes into her dresser with her hairpin, then into the ends of her fingers, _hating_ Johanna.

“You look a damn sight prettier than I did on my wedding day,” Erica was fussing her hair, twisting the curls up into a soft mound above her neck. “All things considered; I didn’t bother much. He already had the boy waiting in the wedding sheets before I’d even made it to the spare room.”

It had rained when Erica was married. The ceremony had been due outside, but the elements had forced all the servants to bungle the altar, the tables and chairs, even the wobbling cake inside the town hall. Erica had looked lovely that day, although for all who knew the appetites of her elderly groom, it had been a novelty.

Unlike Arrow, who had kissed Jimena’s hand with dry Christian lips and a dry, Christian desire. She would like to think he was like Erica’s groom, but no. Excruciatingly, Samuel Arrow was not looking for a wife to uphold his respectability. He was looking for a wife to love, a woman to build a family, to share and cultivate a home. For reasons Jimena could never understand, he had spurned the affections of high society women to pursue _her,_ an orphan who’d scrubbed the filth off the floors in the local drunk tank. But it was Jimena Hawkins he loved, barring all others, and Smollett had spoken about how lighter Samuel had appeared since the engagement (It had to be Samuel now, hadn’t it?)

Jimena tried to imagine herself within the domestic sphere of Arrow’s grand, sterile home. It wasn’t the same as Erica. She had no _physical_ business to attend to and had run of her home and business. Her marriage was a highly convenient sham. But Jimena had to be a wife. She tried to think of wife-y things, like exotic furnishings, of tiny cakes on rose patterned plates, of dresses in cream and gold.

Of Samuel’s skin. She had seen so little of it. What did the rest of him look like? She knew what a man looked like naked – she hadn’t walked around the Benbow with a blindfold. But Samuel? He had clean, hard hands, bruised across his knuckles. She had seen his wrists beneath his frilled cuffs. His throat just above the choke of his collar.

“You’re thinking of it, aren’t you?” Erica could understand so much, yet at the same time, so little. She blew air through her lips and wrestled Jimena’s fringe back with the brush. “Yes. I didn’t have that joy, and pleased as punch about it too, I assure you.”

“Amazingly,” Jimena said, harder than she meant. “That isn’t helping.”

“Hm. Maybe.” The brush was laid back on the cabinet. “But it’ll be over quick, hopefully. It’s a duty you have to perform.” In the mirror, Erica glanced at her sideways. “Do you think you’ll want it?”

Jimena didn’t know. At the Admiral Benbow men had come and gone upstairs with women who’d purred sex with boredom leaking out of them like tears. She’d heard the act and seen the aftermath, with women requesting cleaning rags and dropping their coins in their pinafores. She saw herself as the skivvy running up and down the stairs, washed linens bundled in her thin arms. She saw herself poking the sniggering Erica between the ribs when Mrs B had complained about the mess.

But she couldn’t see herself behind the door, in the bed, dropping coins into her pinafore.

* * *

The carriage bungled down the way to the church. Erica banged the top of the carriage with her parasol.

“Easy!” Erica had never had the elocution lessons. After her early marriage, she never needed to. She hurled out her words the same she did as the skivvy of sixteen. “There are delicate ladies in here, I’ll have you know!”

“Delicate, are you?” Jimena said curtly. She was pressing her lips together to hide her smile. “I wouldn’t have guessed.”

“None more delicate than me,” Erica fought with her skirts as she sat down. “I’m sweating half of the Caribbean Sea in this corset.”

A beautiful day it was, but the humidity was overwhelming. Jimena went to comment on it, before she closed her mouth again. Barely married and already weather was becoming a key subject of conversation.

Erica shrieked.

The carriage jolted once again. The horses stirred, stamped, then whinnied pathetically.

They were thrown as they came to a violent stop.

A crutch struck the inner door of the carriage, pressing hard beneath Jimena’s breasts. Outside, the driver’s cry was hastily muffled.

Lounged against the door, whistling at the sight of Jimena, was none other than Johanna Silver, festively decked in red.

“My, lass,” She said cordially. “Many happy returns on this special day. And there ye be, lookin’ as pretty as a bluebell. Don’t she, boys and girls?”

A chorus of leers accompanied her devil’s smirk.

Erica wilted, almost bending her parasol. Jimena sat up straight and cold and glared at Silver.

“What do you want, Silver?” She hissed. A mocking “ _oooohhh_ ” rose behind Johanna, who smiled further, and lazily pulled at her earlobe.

It was loud and clear.

 Jimena felt for her sapphires, violently unclipping them, and for further insult (and to save time), she ripped off her pearls and lace cuffs, dumping them unceremoniously onto Silver’s outstretched palms as if they were live rats.

 “Hmmm…” Johanna turned to the trembling Erica, holding up an earring to her scarred cheek. “What be your thoughts, Ricky? They suit me, hm?”

“Leave her out of this,” Jimena spat the words. “You have what you want, leave.”

“That be fine, I say,” Johanna tucked away the jewellery in her pocket. “But I know the values of things, do I, and not all treasure be silver and sapphire. Why…” She reached out for the gold rumpled satins of Jimena’s skirts and played them between finger and thumb. “This be here silk, I say. Worth a penny as pretty as you, love.”

If Jimena would have had the means, she would have torn Erica’s parasol from her hands and stabbed Johanna Silver clean through the eye. As she didn’t, instead she sat in silence, daring Johanna with her eyes.

“You…” Jimena closed her hand around the crutch. Johanna’s smile faded, just a little. “You want the dress?”

“Aye.” Johanna nodded with a deliberation that was downright dangerous. “That I do, lassie. Quick to catch on, aren’t ya? Always knew you were smart.”

Jimena had her pride. That was enough, she attempted to tell herself. Erica’s mouth fell open as Jimena began unplucking her bodice.

“Oh no, love!” Johanna cried out, her broad jewelled hand thrust ungainly against Jimena’s chest. “As if ye were to expose yourself in front of my virginal lads! Why, the shock would kill ‘em.”

Brassy laughter shook the carriage. A lewd face loomed at Johanna’s shoulder, only to be pelted by the tail end of Johanna’s crutch clean between the legs.

“Not to mention, lass,” Johanna shook her head. “All them laces and layers, we be here forever. Why, I say…” She nodded, all reasonable. “Ye take it off on the _ship_.”

* * *

The cake was dry. The fondant was cracking through the matte frosting, buttercream becoming rancid in the late afternoon heat.

Samuel Arrow itched in his uniform. He'd worn it in open seas in the baking humid heat, set upon by flies and mosquitos. It had never failed him then. But here, on his wedding day, the collar was all too tight. He had to speak to his tailor, damn it.

Where was she?

"Sam." Smollett's hand rested on his shoulder. Arrow tried not to flinch; he failed. "They've found Erica. And the carriage, or..."

"What's left of it," Arrow whispered.

"Erica is safe," Smollett continued, gently. "But Miss Hawkins...Jimena, she's been..."

"When I find that pirate slattern," Arrow spat, his knuckles pulsing through the skin of his fists. "I'll hang her higher than any other pirate, woman or man, upon God's green earth, has ever been hung!"

* * *

Jimena sat in her fountain of wrecked silk, her hair fallen from its grand fastenings and hanging about her face. The chiffon flowers and lace overlays lay tangled together in the soaking hulk of her skirts, her breasts practically blue with the chill of the bodice damp and cramped against her waist.

“Mad it be,” Johanna was slumped against the frame of the door, her wicked face cracked in a wide-toothed grin. “How I find ye more lovely now, then all trussed up for marriage.”

Jimena sat very, very still. She reached for her veil and squeezed out the water from the lace and drooping pearls.

“My, my.” Johanna sized her up, rustling past in her boots, her dirty cook’s shirt and trousers, her hair loose to her heavy, swinging hips; an informality. Tied to her crutch was Jimena’s wedding bouget. “Did me a bad heart, seein’ you all so packed and prettied for the bridal bed. I did you a favour, lass.” She sneered, gazing out toward the port window. The grey autumn light crisscrossed her hard, arched face. “Why, so dry that Arrow be. Betcha the only thing he ever made wet in his life was his boots on the groaning deck.”

To Jimena’s left there was a pineapple. They had been in Bristol a curiosity, and Benjamina had been endlessly fascinated by them. She had decorated her house in their exotic prickles and even fashioned a dress inspired by, what she termed, “their womanly spikes.”

Johanna, ever the explorer, seemed to have a multitude of the fruit in the little cabin.

The very same pineapple was finding its way to Johanna’s head.

It expanded in globs of sticky seed pimpled yellow, smashing into the wall behind her, and Johanna cackled, throwing back her head in a roar of mirth, her throat pulsing as she did so.

“Cretin!” howled Jimena. “Cow! Pirate! You briny ol’ tart!”

Whatever she could catch, whatever her delicate powdered little hands could scoop up, be it animal or mineral, it decorated the cabin walls. Johanna, ever the clever imp, danced free of it all, spinning on her crutch like an acrobat, revelling in the horrid words falling from Jimena’s screeching mouth. Five years of ladyship brought back down to earth as Jimena once again relived her vocabulary as the inn working guttersnipe. Draped in the ugly, anchored skirts, she couldn’t move quick nor graceful, and Johanna, well…

Hands gripped Jimena’s wrists. The levity was there, but the power spoke of a definite halt. Jimena, panicked and furious and ran with tears, curled her fingers into fists. Her nails were broken, her cuticles ragged, the corners of her fingers bitten back red and puffy. Johanna hadn’t touched her before now, but the bone grip, so Johanna. Affectionate, driving, dominating.

“There she be,” Johanna whispered. The smile was there, stretched beneath her thick smiling lips, the smile she had known to taunt and tantalise and terrify, and her eyes, lit with all sort of sea-green sin. “There be my Jimmy. There be my girl.”

Jimena swallowed, sucking in her teeth and tears. There was no use.

“Aye.” Johanna retrieved the veil and began to pluck each pearl from its placement. “Let’s get you out of those clothes.”


End file.
